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You’d think it would be tricky to lose a blue whale, wouldn’t you? But my son Herbie and I managed it.

The whale had been a favourite Christmas present from Herbie’s Auntie Mavis, who had found him at the Natural History Museum Shop in London. He was furry, blue with whitish spots, had kind eyes, and was a good simple shape to hold. He was called Whaley, and as Herbie was only four and usually needed daily backup at school with a cuddly toy from home, Whaley often did support duties. However, one day in January, we arrived home from school and the whale was gone from the bag he’d been resting in. We retraced our steps back to school, sure we’d find Whaley stranded on the roadside somewhere along the way. But not a whisker. We retraced again back home, squinting under cars, behind garden walls, increasingly desperate. Still no sign of a furry cetacean.

But a whale can’t just disappear. Someone must have retrieved our whale. Maybe some small child had picked him up. But they’d need to know who to return him to, so we made posters. They looked like this:

We put our posters up on the streets and in the school, quite hopeful that boy and whale would soon be reunited. But a week went by, and no whales came out of the woodwork. The trail was going cold. We had to start giving up hope.

Then, two weeks after Whaley’s disappearance, there was a muffled whump on the front door.

Two whales, wearing scarves, with a suitcase! In the suitcase were a few pictures. Here they are:

Two whales at the Natural History Museum. Two whales leaving the museum . . . having some refreshments . . . and riding on the bus back to Oxford.

We had to piece together what must have happened: Whaley, growing a bit restless and needing more whale company, must have travelled back to London, to the Museum where he’d come from. There he’d found a sperm whale friend, wandered round the museum, had the odd snack, and then found the bus back to Oxford with his new chum.

The Sperm Whale was named Sperm Whaley. (Herbie was going through a state-the-obvious phase when inventing names.) And since then, Whaley has been roaming no more…

..that we know about.

P.S.: If you are ever unfortunate/careless enough to lose your whale, it may be helpful to know that the Natural History Museum Shop in London has an extremely efficient online delivery service. . . .

Here are some toys at large in a Natural History Museum at night….

PS If you like hearing about lost toys, you may like this:

Some useful advice:

WHAT TO DO IF YOU LOSE YOUR FAVOURITE TOY

1. Don’t panic.

2. Go back and check all the places you may have left it—e.g., (a) the garden, (b) the bus, (c) the moon, (d) Jupiter.

3. Don’t panic.

4. Put up posters in prominent places. Remember to include identifying features, like number of eyes, legs, and tentacles, like this:5. DON’T PANIC.

6. Abduct all the toys you can find and see if they’re yours.NO! NO! NO! Don’t you know that stealing toys is WRONG?

7. Panic?

8. No, don’t panic. It will be in the last place you look. Things always are.

Here’s a delicious planet, perfectly formed and heaving with life. We’ve had three billion years of pretty good weather, give or take an ice age and the odd mass extinction. But big changes have been happening in the last 10 000 years. The graph of wild animal numbers has gone into free fall. There’s been a huge change in land use to grow food for humans, and the Earth’s settings have been adjusted to new and experimental levels due to extra carbon dioxide in the atmospheric mix. Carbon dioxide is a Good Thing – we’d be too cold for life without it. But a little too much has a big effect on climate. The Earth is a huge old system and the more you find out about past climates the more you wonder what long wild ride is being unleashed right now.

We know we have to do something about this. But the Something we have to do has to be quite a big thing, to really make an impact. Maybe it means treating CO2 as if it is an amazingly expensive and rare resource, to be used very sparingly, as if we’re completely running out of the stuff. And maybe it involves setting some limits: setting aside some sea to be no fishing zones, setting aside our forest to stay forest, and realising that as a species we are the only one that can try to regulate our population to a level that our planet can accommodate. But all these things are givey-uppy things: someone has to not fish, someone has to find another living, someone has to decide to have less children than they might like. Nature is really messy and inconvenient and eats our crops and probably us too if we let it. We might decide to make carbon really expensive so we use it more carefully – but then someone has to find life is more expensive. Like you. And me.

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Does a struggle have to happen – can Now-Us take a hit for Future-Us?

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So that’s the Global Marshmallow Test facing us; do we have the power to imagine how extremely grateful future beings will be to us if we leave the wondrous carboniferous fossil fuels buried for now. (They might even need them in a few hundred years time if there’s an unexpected ice age.) And how grateful they might be to us for having put up with the inconvenience of animals and their habitats so they could inherit some of the bizarre treasure of the extraordinary beings that evolution has produced that share the world with us.

PS: Here’s the proper fabulous picture of the Plumb-Pudding in Danger by Gillray in case you were missing it:PPS: How? Here’s James Hansen on the idea of a Carbon Fee and Dividend (payable to all taxpayers) (on page 5)

Here’s a yummy marshmallow. You know you want it. Of course you want it. But if you can resist its charms for 20 minutes, I will give you double marshmallow. Or something even more delicious that you actually like. Can you wait?

This was the Marshmallow Test, an experiment administered to 4 year old children by Walter Mischel. Many gave in almost immediately, the lure of the mallow was too strong. But some prevailed. They did things like not looking at the mallow, or giving themselves quiet peptalks, or distracting themselves from thoughts of the mallow by singing or making funny faces. And they got through. They followed the tested children’s progress for 40 years, and it seemed that children who were more successful at the Marshmallow Test were more sucessful in later life.

Whatever the validity of the research, the Marshmallow Test highlights the inner struggle we all have to face between the interests of our present selves and the happiness of our future self. Now-Me wants a triple gin and tonic, but Future-Me tomorrow is going to wish Now-Me hadn’t had it. How can the faint calls of Future-Me from tomorrow win against Now-Me’s intense desire for gin? The same goes with late night cheese eating, pensions, and procrastination. How can Future-Me reach into the past, grab Now-Me by the shoulders, and convince Now-Me that going to bed before 1.30am will make everyone happier all round? (And put down that Gruyère, Now-Me!)

Either Future-Me needs a top-notch time machine, or Now-Me needs a more conscientious imagination to make poor Future-Me more tangible.

But we’ll leave Now-Me and Future-Me locked in their eternal struggle and turn instead to The Global Marshmallow Test.

To Be Continued: coming next: The Global Marshmallow Test – watch out for it, Future-You!

You’re perambulating along, by foot or bike or car (or whatever your preference), and you see a particularly lovely patch of roadside wilderness that has been allowed to grow untrimmed, and now it’s waving gently in the breeze. You may want to say “Well done!” And now you can, with the Sketching WeaklyWild Verges Award. Simply cut out & nominate the stretch of road where your lovely verge was, and send to your local county council strimming department.

Personally I’d nominate the top of the A4144 where it meets the A423 in Oxford.

Our street tends to be often perilously bedeckled with dog poo. Usually right outside our own doorstep, where there is a lamp post. To help stop occasions of dismay at inadvertently stepping in an offering, Sketching Weakly brings you the Cut-Out & Keep Turd Alert Flags.All you need to make them is: scissors, Pritt stick, cocktail sticks, a small amount of cardboard box, and a print out of this pdf (see link below):